Mornings With Mo

Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist, reinventor of political journalism, sprawler across staircases, has reopened the clown show for the president's second term and has done so by doing a vigorous set of her greatest hits.

The president is President Standoffish. No, wait, he's Lonely Guy. Or, maybe, he's underwhelming, with a Bridget Jones Strategy to which "some Democrats" say we will all have to become accustomed. There is a nod of the red-to-the-roots melon towards the fact that the president is facing a uniquely well-disciplined, and a uniquely unhinged, political opposition. But then we have a return to the notion that the president would be doing an awful lot better if he made nicey-nice to Eric Cantor.

A Greek chorus of historians and pols have been urging the president to spend more time schmoozing with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as other presidents like Jefferson, Lincoln and L.B.J. did to get their way. But Obama still resists the idea that personal relationships can be pivotal, noting that his "suspicion" is that the issues will be resolved only if Americans "push hard," vote recalcitrant lawmakers out and "reward folks who are trying to find common ground."

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(The blog's basic ground rule on historians? Take less seriously any historian who appears on Morning Joe.)

I really liked Lincoln. Truly, I did. I was entertained for the full two hours plus. I think both James Spader and the great David Straithairn got hosed in the Oscar nominations. But I have a terrible feeling that, within six months, I'm going to hate it purely for its use as a cheap analogical device. First of all, not even the movie is about Lincoln's "schmoozing" anyone except his reluctant Cabinet, and Thaddeus Stevens. It's about Lincoln's subcontracting out the job of buying votes in Congress. Jefferson may have set a good table, and been a lively conversationalist, and hell on the fiddle, but he bought the Louisiana Territory all on his own, and he sent the fleet to deal with the Barbary Pirates and didn't tell the Congress until the fleet was halfway there. And LBJ? A schmoozer? Not until your pecker was firmly in his pocket. Would anyone like to guess the reaction if this current president were to offer a job to get a bill passed, or act as unilaterally as Jefferson did? (Wait, you don't have to guess on the second one. Note the reaction around the country -- even among the Walking Dead -- to the notion that he might use executive orders as part of his gun control strategy.) Would you like to imagine the blind quotes in Politico if this president were to negotiate as roughly with senators as old Lyndon did in his prime? After all, Dowd herself makes use of a little tidbit from Tiger Beat On The Potomac that illustrates quite clearly what the reaction has been even to this president's gentler style of negotiation.

This is the silliest goddamn meme in the history of silly goddamn memes. There is nothing this president can do to move the Republican opposition toward reason. (You can lead the whores to water...). They don't like Democratic presidents. They particularly don't like this one. They don't think Democratic presidents are elected legitimately. The particularly don't think this one was, twice. They are insulated in safe districts. They are the occupants of a self-sustaining universe of think-tanks, sugar daddies, talk-radio cowboys, and ideological chop shops. This simple fact is not going to change even if the president were magically to become a combination of Cary Grant and Sidney Poitier over the soup course. He could sprawl across a staircase, and it wouldn't matter.